The Listicle: 10 Things I've learned in my eventful absence

In which your humble narrator squeaks in with a September post, apologizes insincerely and lists 10 factastic aphorisms to tide over his adoring public until later.

1. Yeah, so, dissertating. It turns out this takes an ungodly amount of time. Sorry (insincere) about the lack of posts.
2. We went on vacation. To Maine. In the car. 3860 miles, roundtrip. Everyone survived. It was mostly fun. We saw a lot of Rust Belt, and went to Trader Joe's stores in many exotic locations, like Cleveland Ohio and Portland, Maine.
3. Maine is pretty. It is also eerily like West Virginia, only northern, and people have decrepit boats on their lawns instead of just cars.
4. "Concatenate" is a great word.
5. So much better than "listicle."
6. But unlike "concatenate," "listicle" is a portmanteau word.
7. "Portmanteau" is a great word.
8. Child #1 turned 4. He is no longer a rotten baby, but has matured into a rotten (but loveable) kid.
9. Child #2 has a thing for Elton John, whose name she pronounces "Molten John."
10. I have postulated that the universe exists on a continuum that runs from douchey to lame. The exact middle point of that continuum is occupied by the recumbent bicycle.

11. Bonus Item: I deeply regret (insincere) the pain that this will likely cause recumbent bicycle enthusiasts.

I'm #2!

In which your humble narrator learns his place.

Child #1 succesfully completed his first year of preschool yesterday. After a celebratory lunch at Costco (he picked it) we did some grocery shopping. Having recently returned from a brief trip to Ohio and Iowa there was no food to speak of in the house.

At the last stop (a liquor store, but you know, a nice one next to the grocery, not one filled with bums or anything), Child #1 so enchanted the cashier that she gave him a sucker. He was enraptured.

After loading the groceries into the van I scooped up Child #1 over my shoulder to put him in his seat. He giggled and said "I love you, Daddy."

"Aww," I replied, "I love you too."

"And I love my sucker," he continued. Not being one to realize when to leave well enough alone, I asked, "Who do you love more, Daddy or your sucker?"

"My sucker." Without missing a beat.

And the Worm Said "Wheeeeeeee!"

In which your humble narrator ventures out and digs up some Oligochaeta.

Since the weather has broken we've ventured out into the yard again. On a recent trip to Target, the children demanded that we purchase watermelon seeds for the garden. Sure, kids, why not? Nobody likes watermelon that much, but why should that stop us from growing tons of the stuff?

While the progeny amused themselves in the yard I began to dig up the sad little strip of earth that some day will be a watermelon patch. Hoo, doggie there were a lot of worms. So I think to myself, "kids love worms!"

"Hey, kids!" I exclaimed, "come look at these worms!"

Both children obediently trundled over to get a load of the squirming masses. Neither was particularly squeamish, and soon both were carrying worms to and fro about the yard.

It wasn't until several minutes later that I looked up to Child #2 happily chattering to her wriggling earth worm while standing to next to the little kiddie slide that we had earlier hauled out of the garage.

"Here you go, worm," she said, "you go down the slide. I'll give you a push."

Damn You, Elton John

In which your humble narrator explains how, according to Child #1, an aging British pop sensation soiled his bath tub.

I was sitting in the bathroom giving Child #1 a bath tonight. They have some bath markers, you know, for the funness. Child #1 picks up the red marker and starts scribbling all over the side of the tub. Conversation went as follows:

Child #1: This is Elton John's blood.
Me: Wait, what?
Child #1: This is Elton John's blood, all over the tub.
Me: How did Elton John's blood get all over the tub?
Child #1: (Waits, pondering, then:) Elton John was in the tub and he cracked.
Me: You are so weird it makes my hair hurt.

I'm pretty sure that the boys at preschool have something to do with his recent blood fixation. Either that or he's a vampire. Whatever.

The Salience of Rain Gear

In which your humble narrator goes to the library with his offspring and is caught between opposing tides of activists in his usually quiet neighborhood.

It's raining and cold (still) so after dropping Wife-a-roo at her place of employment, I drove the children back to the neighborhood, but detoured to the library a few blocks from our house.

The library is across the street from Planned Parenthood.

Today is Good Friday. I had, of course forgotten this. A pleasant (and tiny) police officer waved us into the Library/Rec Center lot after I rolled down my window and cheerfully explained that we were just here for the picture books, thank you.

Both camps were marching around in their little penned-in enclosures soliciting honks from passing drivers and waving placards. Both children spent a fair amount of time looking at the spectacle as we climbed the steps up to the library entrance.

Child #2's only comment on the circus-like atmosphere? "Look, that lady has a pink umbrella! I like it!"

Your List of Lists

In which your humble narrator taxonomizes awesomeness. 

It's a March round-up, y'all. First up:

Things that are Awesome

• Archer
• Fat Tire
• Chili-Mac from scratch
• Brunch with friends whose children play with our children largely unsupervised

Things that Are Awesome but Sad

• When Child #1 describes his stomach bug which produced a lot of diarrhea with the statement: "My bottom is sick."

Things that are Awesome by virtue of the longevity and consistency of their Awesomeness

• David Bowie

Things that are not Awesome

• March Snow
• Wife-a-roo's "raise"
• Trader Joe's parking lots. They are designed by the Architecture Firm of Satan, Satan, & Beelzebub.

Airing Out the Winter-Musty Children

In which your humble narrator decamps from the old homestead.

It hit 40 degrees and the sun came out so the children and I left the house on booted feet to inspect the melt in the neighborhood.

Here they are pictured pontificating on some mud. A good time was had by all.

On our way past the local parochial school I overheard one small boy indignantly retort to another, "I'm not a little kid! I'm six and a half, and I play violent video games!"

Accidental Profanity

In which your humble narrator recalls an inadvertent insult to his sister.

Child #2 is starting to get very interested in letters and colors, even though she's not yet 2 years old. This is because she is freakishly brilliant. Also evil. This child is ornery in a way that the other one never was. This reminded me this week of when Child #1 was learning letters

Sister-of-Me was sitting in our living room while Child #1 played with some brightly colored foam letters we had gotten for him. He selected a couple of letters and toddled over to my sister and said "Look, Auntie! F! U!"

It was indeed a purple F and a yellow U, and of course, completely innocent. I fear that if Child #2 learns F and U that she may mean it.

Nobody Nose the Trouble I've Seen

In which your humble narrator titles a post with an excruciating pun, curses evolutionary biology and slowly returns to the land of the living.

Having caught yet another cold after only a month of relative health, last week, I proceeded to get another infection of my maxillary, ethmoid and frontal sinuses. Fortunately for me my regular doctor had referred me to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist after the last round and my appointment conveniently fell just as I got sick with the latest plague.

The charming ENT doc numbed up my face and shoved a large scary metal thing up my right nostril to have a bit of a look around while making the ever reassuring comment "Yeah, it's pretty gross in here." I shouldn't complain, she was really very pleasant about the whole thing, and she vacuumed out my sinuses free of charge, leaving me without congestion for at least a half hour. After a sample of some snot from somewhere in the vicinity of my right eyeball and a few blood tests, it was concluded that I was severely infected with some hideous bacterial agent. After a few days of unpleasant antibiotics, I am at least feeling human again.

Evolutionary biologists have not come to a consensus as to the adaptive purpose of the sinuses in the human head, to which I inquire: "What the hell are you evolutionary biologists spending all your research dollars on? 'Field research' in Vegas? Coke binges? Betting on the ponies?"

Morality Play in One Act

In which your humble narrator relates the spirit of goodness in Child #1.

To begin, some background. Child #1 goes to the local liberal Jewish preschool. We picked this school for several reasons. First, it's only 2 miles away. Second, they offer generous financial assistance. And third, and most important, the preschool teachers at this school are ladies of a certain age who have been teaching preschool since your humble narrator was a wee tyke. Preschools should be run by sweet little old ladies. Child #1's teacher is named Joannie.

The Scene: our car on the way home after preschool. 

Child #1: I have to do a good deed.
Me: What?
Child #1: Joannie said I have to do a good deed. I have to.
Me: Okay. So what are you going to do?
Child #1: A good deed. Joannie said so.
Me: Yeah, but what kind of good deed?
Child #1: I will brush my teeth politely. (Yells) It's a mitzvah!

I'm so relieved that we won't have to endure the trauma of him being rude to the tooth paste. And I know the tooth brush couldn't handle it.

It's a New Year in Hate

In which your humble narrator brings the mad dizdain* to five offending abominations.

1. My house, she is the structural equivalent of  the type of crack-addled, welfare queen that only exists in Republicans' imaginations. She always needs something. A roof, a furnace, a new water heater, new toilets, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
2. The intimation from students that I'm supposed to respond to emails sent after 9:00 p.m. within an hour or two. Here's the deal students, my kids go to bed at 7:00. Then it's Me time which involves equal quantities of beer and Netflix streaming. Then I go to bed. 
3. Using** the word "utilize" instead of the word "use." Seriously, why?
4. George Stephanopolous. This one isn't entirely rational. He just bugs me.
5. The recent decision on the part of Child #2 to stop saying "no" and "yes" but rather to say "nope" and "yep" which are, in case you didn't infer it on your own, completely impossible to distinguish between when she's got a damn pacifier in her mouth.

*This is an intentional misspelling for comic effect. I can spell. This is a quality blog. Tell your friends.
** See? If I had said "utilizing the word 'utilize'" I would be a heinous douche.

Conversational Torpedo in One Act

In which your humble narrator transcribes a recent conversation between Child #1 and Wife-a-roo.

Scene: At home, the office, the last day of 2010...

Wife-a-roo: Child #1, this is the last day of the year.
Child #1: (barely glances up) Yes.
Wife-a-roo: Tomorrow will be a new year.
Child #1: Why did you say that to me?
Wife-a-roo: Uhh... huhhh... what?
Child #1: (Insistently) Why did you say that to me?
Wife-a-roo: (Incredulously) Uhh... I though you would be interested.
Child #1: I wasn't.

Babies Watching Babies

In which your humble narrator watches a baby watching babies and loses any sense of perspective.

Child #2 is a far more social animal than Child #1. She smiles at strangers. She's learned all the names of the other little children in her two-day-per-week daycare room. She talks to cashiers. She's simply way, way more into people than Child #1 was as an 18-month-old.

Her most recent favorite pastime involves watching Babies (2010) the Thomas Balmès film about, well, babies. Wife-a-roo found the film on the online streaming section of Netflix and it's been a regular staple for about a week. Particularly in the evening after a hard day of annoying her brother, changing clothes twelve times and spreading filth as far as the eye can see, she toddles up, says "Watcha Baby!" and demands to be placed in lap in front of the computer. She'll usually watch intently for 10-20 minutes as the four babies from far-flung reaches of the globe go through their little baby lives. She's quite approving of the amount of dirt that the African and Mongolian babies get to experience on a regular basis. Another favorite scene is when the little Mongolian chap is taking a bath in a washtub and a friendly goat drops by to drink some of the bath water.

It's clearly animated viewing on Child #2's part. She imitates the babies facial expressions and even describes their emotional states, "Baby sad," or "Baby laugh." In short she's enthralled.

I'm less enamored. I've done a lot of baby-watching in the past three years and frankly I'd rather spend my screen time watching British people being devastatingly cruel to each other or possibly exploding.

Minivantastic

In which your humble narrator purchases a Mom-mobile.

Bit the bullet. Bought the minivan. I don't love it, but it's a hell of a lot easier to insert my squirming progeny into the sliding doors and high seats than in my beloved wagon of yore. No one explained the crippling back pain associated with child-rearing to me before I went and impregnated Wife-a-roo.

Word to the wise, if you're going to be the Mommy and stay home with your children, it behooves you to be a smallish woman (around 5'4" tall) with hips. If you're lanky and over six feet, the problem you run into is that small children are small (hence the name) and spend most of their time all the way down on the floor. If you're tall, the floor is very far away. Also the children are fickle and like to be picked up from the floor and then returned to the floor approximately 457 times per hour. This is a recipe for lambasted lumbar.

And I can't overstate the importance of hips. If you don't have them, there is no convenient place to place one child while simultaneously using your free hand to prevent the other child from eating dirt.

Monday Morning Hate

In which your humble narrator enumerates five invidious calumnies of modern life.

• The terrible combination of hail stones and 45 mile per hour winds. Sure, I'd love to get a new roof every 18 months.What could be more fun than having workmen scurrying over your house?
•  "Angry electorate" news stories. I get it, but until Grandma gets out of her chair, clicks off Fox News and actually starts lobbing Molotov cocktails, I'm not that impressed. Let's identify the issue correctly, it's the "whiny, uninformed, proudly ignorant, cry-baby electorate."
• Unending upper respiratory infections.
• The fact that Mazda's funky little minivan is just not big enough for someone who is 6'1". Hello Toyota Sienna, goodbye youth.
• This.

3 year old weird

In which your humble narrator relates a bizarre dialogue with Child #1.

Child #1: (after drinking) This orange juice makes my body smooth.

Me: What?

Child #1: This orange juice makes my body smooth.

 Me: Why?

Child #1: It just does, okay?

Hooray for using the Potty

In which your humble narrator closes a door of complain and opens a window of kvetch.

Child #1 is reliably using the toilet. Hooray! No more poopy diapers of a 2.75 year-old thrashing around while screaming "No! Don't clean my testicles! I don't like testicle poo!"

Yeah, well Buddy, this hasn't exactly been a picnic for me either.

Now that he goes to the potty, he goes all the time. Today I think he went 38 times between 8:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. I've spent more time in my downstairs bathroom over the past three weeks than in the preceding six months. It's really not a big deal, unless the adult to child in home ratio reaches 1:2. In that case, making sure Child #1 gets to do his business without interference means perching on the end of the tub in an unnaturally twisted position to assist him while using my right foot to repel the marauding advances of Child #2 who wishes to be intimately involved in the experience, mostly by pinching the bare thighs of Child #1 whilst he attempts to urinate.

Public bathrooms are another boondoggle since they are both wonderfully exotic but full of dangerous menaces like loud flushing toilets and electric hand dryers.

We're packing the children and my Mom into the car on Friday to drive to Iowa for a friend's wedding. This will be the first "potty-trained" trip.

We who are about to get peed on salute you.

Cold Comfort

In which your humble narrator is grateful for a little well-timed aridity, celebrates improbably weddings, the color orange and remembers his paternal grandmother who couldn't remember anything.

It finally stopped raining. June has been unpleasant. It's either been beastly hot or raining or both (mostly both). If I wanted to live in a climate unfit for human habitation I would have decamped for Dixie years ago, thank you very much. The garden was waterlogged and there were mushrooms all over the lawn. Child #1 who assiduously scrapes any single particles of green vegetable matter off of his carrots has shown a surprising interest in eating the damn yard mushrooms. "No, no we only eat grocery store mushrooms!" And it's not like he would eat grocery store mushrooms either, but for some reason, potentially poisonous things growing in the yard look tasty. My sister suggested that I use this to my advantage and sprinkle foods he refuses to eat in the grass to gin up some interest. "Look! The yard grew us some meatloaf! Isn't nature's bounty wonderful?"

Wife-a-roo and I went to a wedding on Saturday. A friend of mine from my days working in the used bookstore got hitched to a perfectly lovely woman much to the surprise of everyone who knows this guy. A former unwashed, anarchistic, dread-locked, hippie-jock hybrid, this guy managed to find a charming woman who actually seems to, you know, love him. The wedding, for me, was a delightful combination of heartfelt goodwill mixed with with a noticeable undercurrent of surrealism, a bride dressed in a bitchin' orange wedding dress and free dinner. Just my kind of shindig.

The wedding was a nice way to end up what had been a lousy week which kicked off on Monday with news from West Virginia that my grandmother had died. She had suffered from Alzheimers for a number of years. The last time I saw her at my grandfather's funeral almost two years ago, I had to introduce myself to her. She was a good woman. She took care of my sister and I often when we were kids. She taught us a number of useful skills and took crap from no one. Her personality was big. She loved cheap beer, her unloveable fat cat, making things and delivering well-deserved smacks to various smart-alecky members of her family. She was an excellent cook and made everyone feel welcome in her home. She fumed loudly about sexism. She registered as a Republican to please her parents and became a liberal because of the civil rights movement. She sewed, knitted and crocheted. My daughter is sleeping tonight wearing a pajama shirt that Grandma made for me thirty years ago.

Her memory, language and abilities were all degraded by her disease to a point that the woman that I knew has been gone for a long time. Unlike some Alzheimer's patients, she seemed to, at least intermittently, be aware of her diminishing faculties. I suppose an easy death should seem like a relief for a woman who had lost so much of herself. But it's cold comfort.

Phoney Quality Time

In which your humble narrator reflects on the plugged-in parents at the playground.

The New York Times ran a story this week about parent using smart phones and ignoring their children. The descriptions of typical interactions largely mirrored the sort of thing I've observed on the playground. Harried parents bring their offspring to the park for some quality time, and spend the entire time on their phones. On a recent morning outing, we arrived at the park to find a mother and a little girl. The mother was on her phone when we arrived, and on her phone when we left 45 minutes later. The little girl was apparently only allowed to play within a 15 foot radius of the mother. One begins to wonder: what is the point? Surely she could ignore her child at home.

Regular readers might expect a full-throttle vitriolic screed at this point. But with an uncharacteristic spirit of charity I have to admit that I understand the impulse. I don't have a fancy phone, but I do stay home with the kids most days while simultaneously trying to "work." Sometimes all I want to do is to have the kids leave me alone for five minutes so I can keep my email inbox down to a manageable size. When classes are in session I make it a point to respond to student emails within 24 hours. This can obviously take up some time during regular childcare hours.

I think part of the issue is that, as parents, we're supposed to be in a state of filial bliss at all times. Certainly the child-centric culture of the past twenty years blares its expectations of personal fulfillment through "parenting."* If your precious little wunderkinds aren't making you happy, well then there must be something wrong with you.

Or not.

The Big Schlep

In which your humble narrator goes to the big city, eats pizza and bagels and discovers that there are a hell of a lot of playgrounds in Manhattan.

Apologies for the infrequency of postings of late. The end of the term and its accompanying flurry of work and a recent trip out east have left little time for writing lists of stuff that irritates me. 

Child #2 rides the subway

Child #1 looks out over New York Harbor

Wife-a-roo, and Children #1 and #2 and I flew to New York last Wednesday. Wife-a-roo had a job interview with some sexy research outfit doing even sexier research than she usually does. Since they paid for her flight and we had access to an empty apartment courtesy of one of her investment-banky cousins,* we decided to make a trip of it.

Both children were surprisingly good travelers. The flight out was completely without incident except for when Child #1 was informed that he would have to remove his shoes in the security line. This prompted an on-the-floor screaming (and sock-footed) fit much to the delight of our fellow travelers behind us waiting for their own chance to do the TSA tango. Calm was restored on the other side of security when Child #1 was re-shod as he choked back the tears of rage and humiliation of having to go sock footed in public for 1.5 minutes.

We stayed in Manhattan near Gramercy park for two days. Wife-a-roo had her interview which went well. We saw an old friend from college. We ordered freakin' awesome takeout.

On Friday, Wife-a-roo's father drove down from ye olde New Hampshire homestead to meet up with us. We had lunch at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the village. Then we piled into his ancient Volvo and went out the Mid-town tunnel to the Long Island Expressway to go stay for a couple of nights at the North Shore Home of Wife-a-roo's aunt.

A brief note on Wife-a-roo's family and their relationship to cars. They kill them. Dead. Grandpa's Volvo has 323,000 miles on it. The air-conditioning is kaput. It was 90 degrees and humid on the L.I.E. outbound on a Friday afternoon. Then the car overheated.